48
Lila
By the next afternoon, the apartment had settled into the kind of quiet that came after fear had finally run out of fresh places to land.
Peace felt too generous a word for it. What we had was softer and more fragile, everyone breathing again while some part of us still listened for the next thing to break.
I was propped on the couch with pillows bracing my bad side, my sling making me feel half mummified and wholly annoyed. Blue had checked me one last time before going home and left strict instructions about keeping still, taking my pills on schedule, and avoiding anything stupid.
Jackson had apparently heard all of that as a sacred oath.
He had spent the afternoon hovering with all the subtlety of a surveillance drone.
Water appeared before I knew I wanted it.
Pillows got adjusted whenever I shifted.
If I glanced toward the kitchen, he was already asking what I needed.
I had stopped fighting him somewhere around the third glass of water, partly because exhaustion had stripped the argument out of me and partly because letting him care for me felt better than I wanted to admit.
He stood in the kitchen now with coffee in one hand, his attention technically on nothing in particular and actually on me. I was about to tell him the world would survive if he blinked when someone knocked.
Every line of his body changed. The mug hit the counter, and he was already moving by the time I said, “Jackson,” quietly enough to remind him this was still my apartment and not an active combat zone.
He looked back. Whatever had hardened in his face eased when he saw me. “I got it.”
I let him. Getting off the couch still hurt like hell, and after what had happened, I understood why a knock at my door could turn him into the man who had come through Jude’s house with a gun in his hand.
Cage stood on the other side with a white bakery box in one hand and a drink carrier in the other.
His hair was a mess, his eyes shadowed, and his shoulders looked too tight for a boy his age.
The moment he spotted me past Jackson, relief loosened something in his face while guilt pulled everything else taut.
Jackson stepped aside, and Cage entered with the careful quiet people used in hospital rooms. “I brought some of Jade’s favorite yums,” he said, his voice rougher than usual.
I smiled because he looked like he needed permission to breathe. “I see that.”
He set everything on the coffee table and glanced toward the hallway. The look would have been subtle if I hadn’t once been sixteen myself.
Jade appeared in her doorway almost on cue, wearing leggings and one of my oversized sweatshirts, her posture broadcasting that she absolutely had not been waiting for him. They looked at each other, and Cage’s face changed first.
“Well,” Jade said, leaning against the frame with studied indifference. “You look terrible.”
Cage let out a breath that almost became a laugh. “You look alive, so I’ll take it.”
That wiped the teasing straight off her face. She crossed the room and wrapped both arms around him before either of them could decide whether they were ready for that much honesty. Cage froze for half a beat, then held her like he had spent the last day keeping himself together for exactly this.
Jackson looked away. I didn’t. After the night we had all survived, I had earned the right to watch my daughter cling to a boy who had been terrified he might never see her again.
When Jade finally stepped back, she swiped beneath one eye and immediately reached for attitude. “If you say anything about that, I’ll deny it.”
Cage’s expression went solemn in a way that fooled nobody. “I didn’t see shit.”
“Good.” She glanced at the bakery box, grateful for the easier subject. “You brought yums?”
His mouth twitched. “I’m learning.”
The smallest smile touched her face before she jerked her head toward the hallway. “Come on.”
Cage looked at me first, then Jackson, asking without making either of us force him to. I gave him a nod. “Go.”
Jackson followed it with one of his own, though naturally he couldn’t leave well enough alone. “Door stays open.”
Jade groaned. “Oh my God.”
He lifted one shoulder. “We survived you being fake kidnapped. I’m not losin’ you to teenage hormones too.”
“Dad.” The word came out fast and automatic.
The room paused around it. Jade blinked. Jackson did too. Even Cage looked like he had just witnessed something sacred and was trying not to stare.
Jackson recovered first, because of course he did. A slow grin spread across his face. “You call me that again and I’m gonna get real emotional.”
Jade pointed at him. “Don’t make it weird.”
His grin widened. “It was already weird in a sweet and sentimental way.”
“Now it’s worse.” She grabbed Cage’s sleeve and hauled him toward her room before Jackson could turn one accidental Dad into a full ceremony.
The door stayed cracked because apparently fatherhood had taken him less than twenty-four hours to weaponize.
Jackson dropped onto the couch beside me and reached for my hand. “You okay?”
I looked toward the hallway, where Jade’s voice had already dropped low enough to tell me the bravado was gone. “Yes.” My fingers curled around his. “And no.”
He huffed a quiet laugh. “Fair.”
The apartment settled around the murmur of their voices. I wasn’t trying to listen, but Jade’s room wasn’t far away and neither teenager had mastered whispering through emotion.
“I’m so pissed at him, Cage. He used me like I was some kind of pawn in his weird little game.
” Jade’s voice carried more clearly as anger pushed it higher.
“And I knew there was something off with Jude. I always knew there was something creepy about him. Everybody acted like I was just being a bitch because I didn’t like him, but I knew. ”
Beside me, Jackson’s jaw tightened. I squeezed his hand before either of us could turn what we heard into one more thing Jade had to manage for us.
Cage answered after a beat. “You weren’t wrong.”
Jade exhaled shakily. “If something worse had happened to my mom because of all this...” Her voice caught, and my chest tightened with it. “I can’t even think about it without wanting to break something.”
Cage’s reply came steady and low. “You got every right to be mad,” he said. “At all of it. At him. At your grandpa. At everybody who put you and your mom in this mess.”
The silence that followed felt private enough that I almost wished the cracked door were wider for air and narrower for sound. Then Cage spoke again, softer.
“I thought you were missing. I thought something happened to you and I couldn’t do anything about it.” His voice dipped. “I was scared outta my mind, Jade. Then we found out about the texts. Why didn’t you tell us about the texts you been gettin’, Jade?”
Jade took longer to answer. “Because they were words in texts. I didn’t want to stress my mom out.
My dad had just come back into our lives.
My grandpa and my uncle were being assholes about it.
Before that, they were always putting this pressure on her with Crude Jude, like we aren’t strong enough to take care of ourselves.
I didn’t want to scare her or give her one more thing to deal with.
If it turned into a flesh-and-bone threat, I would have, but it had just been texts. No one ever actually approached me.”
The words hurt because I understood them. She had watched me juggle Jackson, Dad, Matty, work, and a move to a new town, then decided protecting me meant carrying something frightening by herself.
Cage wasn’t willing to let her excuse it. “That was too damn dangerous a game to play. Texts were serious too. That fake kidnapping could have been that person texting you. We could have lost you.”
Her response came too quietly for me to make out. I heard Cage answer a moment later, warmth replacing the fear in his voice. “I’m just relieved you’re okay. And that your mom’s okay. That’s what matters.”
Something in my throat tightened. Jackson caught my expression and gave me a soft, far too satisfied look.
I raised a brow. “Don’t.”
His face went innocent. “What?”
“You have a look.”
“A good look?”
“A smug one.”
He leaned back with the confidence of a man who had apparently forgotten how close I was to throwing a pillow at him. “Can’t help it if our kid’s got excellent taste.”
I rolled my eyes. “You are unbelievable.”
“I’m right, though.”
Unfortunately, he probably was.
A few minutes later Jade emerged with the bakery box, Cage behind her. The blush in her cheeks told me their private conversation had gone somewhere neither of them wanted adult commentary on, but both looked steadier.
She set the box in my lap and opened it. “Pick one.”
Donuts and muffins filled almost every inch. I laughed. “You brought so many,”
Cage rubbed the back of his neck. “Didn’t know what anybody would want.”
Jackson eyed the sugar like it was a perfectly acceptable medical intervention. “Smart man. Sweets are the best way to these women’s hearts,”
Jade grabbed a chocolate frosted donut and perched on the arm of the couch with complete disregard for every furniture rule I had once enforced.
Cage took the chair across from us, and for a while the room found something almost normal in pastry wrappers, coffee lids, and the small negotiations over who had stolen the best donut.
Normal lasted until Jade looked at Jackson. “So are you planning to breathe for Mom too while she’s healing, or is the stalking limited to watching her every time she moves?”
His offended expression arrived immediately. “I’m not stalking her. I’m monitoring.”
“That is just stalker language with a leather cut.”
Cage choked on his coffee. My laugh pulled hard enough at my ribs to make me wince, and Jackson caught it immediately.
He pointed toward my side. “See? This is why you’re supposed to be resting.”
I pressed a hand lightly against my ribs until the ache settled. “Then stop being funny.”
“That was our daughter, not me.”